Thanks for looking into this Saulius! I’d seen a few things re baitfish and it has been on my list to look more into for a while. But this will raise its priority—and make my task easier by providing a lot of the underlying sources. I’ll discuss this with some of the farm animal groups to see if they have ideas. In the meantime, let me know if you find more info.
LewisBollard
Karma: 1,415
I agree. I’ll aim to put together a list of research Q’s I’m interested in and share within the next month. Generally posts of this form—providing data and information on a neglected issue—are the most valuable, though I try to read most EA posts re animal welfare ideas.
Thanks for the feedback and Q’s Halstead. I made the decision to include two ACE researchers—ACE decided which two staff to include, while I personally picked Natalie. I chose to include ACE because (a) while I’ve had concerns re their past research, I think their work at identifying giving opportunities has been very good, (b) several EA donors told me it would increase their faith in the fund—and its value to them—to have ACE’s expertise and viewpoint represented, and (c) I’ve been personally impressed by all ACE researchers i’ve met, especially re their intelligence, open-mindedness, and EA values alignment. I thought some of your (Halstead’s) critiques of ACE were valid, but I don’t view them as especially relevant to Toni and Jamie’s ability to make outstanding giving recommendations via the fund.
I’m traveling in Asia so will be slow replying, but will try to ultimately reply to all messages here re the animal welfare fund (if only once i’m back in the US next week). Thanks for engaging with this!
Thanks for your feedback and questions, and thanks for your patience while I was traveling. On reflection, I think I made a mistake in delegating two seats on the Fund to ACE, rather than picking Toni and Jamie independently. My intention was to increase the Fund’s ideological diversity (ACE researchers have a range of viewpoints, and I wanted to avoid the natural bias to pick those who shared mine). But I now think this benefit is outweighed by the harm that the Fund could be misperceived as reflecting ACE’s organizational views or being based on ACE research.
Otherwise, I worry we’re talking past each other. I agree with several, though not all, of your criticisms of ACE’s historical performance. But I also think ACE’s charity recommendations have created substantial value by driving donations toward higher-impact activities (though I don’t always agree with them). I believe this more because of my independent view of the activities and groups involved than because of ACE’s public writing.
More importantly, I don’t think your criticisms of ACE reflect on Toni and Jamie’s ability to help the Fund accomplish the goals we established: a wider range of views, a deeper resource of time, and more capacity to monitor impact. Both are smart, have different ideas on how to most effectively fund animal groups within an EA framework, and have much more time than I do to identify new giving opportunities. And both have an open-mindedness and commitment to truth that I think is critical for objectively assessing impact.
Thanks again for engaging with this decision, and the Fund, so thoughtfully. We look forward to sharing updates on the Fund’s donations in the coming months. And thank you, as always, to everyone for your support of effective animal advocacy — whether via the Fund or directly.
Thanks for your feedback and question Dunja, and thanks for your patience while I was traveling. I agree that the Fund benefits from having a diverse team, but disagree that criticism of ACE is the right kind of ideological diversity. Both Toni and Jamie bring quite different perspectives on how to most cost-effectively help animals within an EA framework (see, for instance, the charities they’re excited about here). The Fund won’t be funding ACE now they’re onboard, and my guess is that we’ll continue to mostly fund smaller unique opportunities, rather than ACE top or standout charities. So I don’t think people’s views on ACE will be especially relevant to our giving picks here. I see less value to bringing in critics of EA, as many (though not all) of ACE’s critics are, as we’d have trouble reaching a consensus on funding decisions. Instead, I encourage those who are skeptical of EA views or the groups we fund to donate directly to effective animal groups they prefer.
Thanks for the feedback on this. I explained my thinking on selecting ACE staff for the fund here. I wrote, in part:
“On reflection, I think I made a mistake in delegating two seats on the Fund to ACE, rather than picking Toni and Jamie independently. My intention was to increase the Fund’s ideological diversity (ACE researchers have a range of viewpoints, and I wanted to avoid the natural bias to pick those who shared mine). But I now think this benefit is outweighed by the harm that the Fund could be misperceived as reflecting ACE’s organizational views or being based on ACE research.
...
More importantly, I don’t think your criticisms of ACE reflect on Toni and Jamie’s ability to help the Fund accomplish the goals we established: a wider range of views, a deeper resource of time, and more capacity to monitor impact. Both are smart, have different ideas on how to most effectively fund animal groups within an EA framework, and have much more time than I do to identify new giving opportunities. And both have an open-mindedness and commitment to truth that I think is critical for objectively assessing impact. I agree that the Fund benefits from having a diverse team, but disagree that criticism of ACE is the right kind of ideological diversity. Both Toni and Jamie bring quite different perspectives on how to most cost-effectively help animals within an EA framework (see, for instance, the charities they’re excited about here). The Fund won’t be funding ACE now they’re onboard, and my guess is that we’ll continue to mostly fund smaller unique opportunities, rather than ACE top or standout charities. So I don’t think people’s views on ACE will be especially relevant to our giving picks here. I see less value to bringing in critics of EA, as many (though not all) of ACE’s critics are, as we’d have trouble reaching a consensus on funding decisions. Instead, I encourage those who are skeptical of EA views or the groups we fund to donate directly to effective animal groups they prefer....
I agree that the Fund benefits from having a diverse team, but disagree that criticism of ACE is the right kind of ideological diversity. Both Toni and Jamie bring quite different perspectives on how to most cost-effectively help animals within an EA framework (see, for instance, the charities they’re excited about here). The Fund won’t be funding ACE now they’re onboard, and my guess is that we’ll continue to mostly fund smaller unique opportunities, rather than ACE top or standout charities. So I don’t think people’s views on ACE will be especially relevant to our giving picks here. I see less value to bringing in critics of EA, as many (though not all) of ACE’s critics are, as we’d have trouble reaching a consensus on funding decisions. Instead, I encourage those who are skeptical of EA views or the groups we fund to donate directly to effective animal groups they prefer.”
That’s still my view, but other members of the team may have different perspectives. We don’t have any immediate plans to add more people to the Fund, but I’m always open to it. In the meantime, I appreciate the feedback we’ve gotten from the EA community on this, and the constructive manner in which it’s been framed.
Good Q Peter. I’m hoping to put out a set of research Q’s that I’d find useful in the new year. But I’m most excited about Q’s you and other EAs come up with independently because they’re more likely to identify opportunities we’re not thinking about or scrutinize claims we take for granted.
Thanks for the Q Josh. Yes that has been the primary approach to date. At Open Phi we’ve been following up with almost all of the grant recipients to see (a) if they’re ready to graduate to larger Open Phil grants (~5 already have), (b) whether they did roughly what they said they would (~80-90% seem to be), and (c) anything else we can learn (I hope to share some of these learnings when we have the time to collate them, perhaps via a research newsletter).
Thanks Kevin. I think the fund aims to integrate different perspectives but not necessarily different value systems.
I’ll let Toni or Jamie speak to differences with the new ACE fund.
And yes, definitely some of the orgs that receive EA funds should graduate to multi-year funding from Open Phil. About 5 have already, and I’m optimistic that another 10 or so will in the next year.
Thanks Tee!
Thanks for the question Jamie. I was primarily thinking of the welfare capacity-building work in China of the International Committee for Cooperation on Animal Welfare, Compassion in World Farming, World Animal Protection, and the RSPCA. But there are also more limited examples with Humane Society International’s work in Vietnam and India, WAP’s work in Thailand, and some smaller groups’ work in the Ukraine.
Thanks for the question Michael. A few thoughts:
I think cultivated meat could be a game-changer. It seems to have a clear route to competing with the most expensive animal products (think foie gras or bluefin tuna) and to improving plant-based meats as an additive at a low percentage. But the biggest prize would be if cultivated meat could compete with cheap animal products at scale. We commissioned this report because we’re uncertain about whether cultivated meat can reach that price point.
The report outlines a number of major technical challenges to lowering the cost of cultivated meat. I encourage people to read the whole report. But the tl;dr is that growing animal cells in bulk is really hard, and in particular constraints on bioreactor size and sterility make this really challenging. As a result, you should probably be skeptical of claims that cultivated meat will be price-competitive at scale within the next decade.
I think how much the report should update you beyond that depends on your priors, and what they’re based on. For someone who thinks, based on media articles or some general intuition like Moore’s Law, that it’s inevitable that cultivated meat will become price-competitive, this might be a pretty large negative update. But for a scientist at a cultivated meat startup this probably isn’t much of an update at all.
My biggest takeaway is that we need more publicly available work on the science of cultivated meat. Because most of the research is being done by startups who need to protect their IP, not much gets published. So I’d love to see this paper serving as one input in an ongoing scientific discussion, rather than being the final word. In that vein, I recommend this Techno-economic assessment of animal cell-based meat, published last year by UC Davis scientists. And I’m looking forward to a similar assessment that GFI commissioned, which should be released any day now.
Otherwise I feel pretty unsure on the right takeaways / way forward. This does make me more pessimistic that startups can reach cost-competitiveness within a time frame that investors will accept — though it’s possible they’ll find a business model in competing with pricier animal products or blending with plant-based. And I think it suggests the need to diversify approaches, e.g. in also pursuing plant-based and fermentation approaches, and moral advocacy, given there’s no one sure silver bullet here. But it also makes me think there’s greater importance to more patient academic research on cultivated meat, since it suggests a longer timeline and the potential payoff remains huge.
Hey Daniela!
Invertebrates: I’d love to see more research on invertebrate sentience and welfare, of the kind that I know you and Rethink Priorities are doing. We’re also excited to see more advocacy on the welfare of aquatic invertebrates, which seems like it may be more politically feasible than work on other invertebrates’ welfare. For instance, we recently funded Crustacean Compassion to push for the inclusion of crustaceans in UK animal welfare laws. I’d love to see more researchers and advocates working on invertebrates, since the numbers are obviously huge and my sense is that a lot of low-hanging fruit remains. For instance, I was very pleasantly surprised to see CP Foods, the world’s largest shrimp producer, last year announcing an end to eyestalk ablation — it would be great to see more work on reforms like this.
Wild animals: I’m excited about the work that Wild Animal Initiative is doing to build an academic field of research in welfare biology. I think we need a lot more research on questions like the relative welfare of different species in different ecosystems and the prevalence and severity of various welfare harms like disease and starvation. I’d also like to see more study of the total welfare implications of things that humans are already doing to actively manage wildlife, for instance existing government wildlife vaccination and predator control programs. I think one potentially promising aim would be to have animal welfare become a goal of government land management policies, alongside existing goals like preserving game species, maximizing biodiversity, etc.
Research Qs: in addition to the questions above, two questions I’m always interested in for advancing tractability are (a) what are the low-hanging fruit for reforms, and (b) what are the key obstacles to progress? For instance, on aquatic invertebrates, I’d love to see a survey of shrimp and prawn producers on how hard various welfare reforms seem, and what’s stopping them from implementing them. I’m guessing the most common obstacle will be cost. But I’d be especially interested in reforms where the obstacle is more like “we’d need to see a pilot project to show that’s commercially feasible.” For instance, given CP Foods is ending eyestalk ablation after minimal pressure, I’m guessing this is a low-hanging fruit, and I’d be interested in researching how we could get other shrimp producers to follow suit.
Thanks for drawing attention to this important issue Ula. I’m very sorry to read of the experiences you and others have shared, which I’ll address here and in separate replies to Daniela and Eze’s posts below.
I completely agree the animal movement needs to do better to ensure it’s a safe place for all its employees and volunteers. We’re supporting a number of groups and individuals working to create a more inclusive and supportive global movement. For instance, we’re major funders of Encompass, ACE, and Animal Advocacy Careers, as well as a number of regional efforts (like a new China EAA fellows program). And in response to complaints last year about the FAST listserv not being a safe place, we funded Amanda Cramer to work full-time on fixing it. But there’s a lot more work to do, and we’re always looking for new initiatives we could fund to help.
More broadly I think our movement needs to continue to professionalize its approach to management, HR, and employee development. I’ll address more specific issues around sexual harassment and mismanagement in my answers to Daniela and Eze below. But I’ll say for now that we’ve encouraged grantees to raise salaries and invest more in management training, and have provided funding to support both aims. And we’re very supportive of Neysa Colizzi’s work to improve leadership and governance at a number of our major grantees, for instance by coaching executive directors and assembling new independent boards.
On the specific examples you gave: we’re supportive of the action that Anima International took in the case you describe, and my understanding is that the employees affected are still with Anima and supportive of how the situation was resolved. (I don’t think I can say any more without violating their confidentiality.) I don’t know the answers on the ProVeg case — they’re not a grantee and we’re limited in our ability to inquire into issues at non-grantees.
Thanks for sharing this Daniela. I’m very sorry to read of what you experienced. I completely agree we should stop normalizing activists’ mistreatment and discriminatory practices, and that organizations need to develop active policies to prevent these situations. (I’ll address your point about continued grants as part of my reply to Eze below.)
On the policy point, over the last three years we’ve strengthened our requirements for grantees around sexual harassment policies and procedures. We now require all of our farm animal welfare grantees to implement a list of best practices prepared by our law firm. Most recently, in response to specific concerns raised, we added two more requirements: (1) forbidding grantees from asking for NDAs in harassment cases, and (2) requiring grantees to commission outside investigations of all harassment cases involving leadership. We also provide special grants to cover grantees’ costs to develop stronger policies, implement them, and train staff to abide by them.
And yes, it’d be great to discuss this with you further — I’ve just emailed you to find a time.
Thanks for the questions Eze. I encourage readers to also check out my answers to Ula and Daniela above, since they apply here too. I’ll focus here on your specific questions about how Open Phil addresses problems at grantees.
In general, when we learn of problems at grantees — like mistreatment of employees — we first try to learn more about the specifics of the situation. We then have a range of proportional responses we consider and adjust depending on how they go. This ranges from extensive discussions with grantee leadership to specific demands of them (e.g. that they adopt an independent board or investigate a particular case) to ultimately cutting off funding.
We have cut off funding to grantees that have proven unwilling to address major problems. But we do treat this as a last resort after all attempts at internal leverage and change have failed. We take this approach because we’re such a large portion of most grantees’ funding that us cutting off funding will typically result in them having to lay off employees, in some cases many. For this reason we often find that employees raising concerns with us don’t want us to cut funding to their employer (to be clear, this is not dispositive — it’s one consideration). In that case we also lose our leverage to insist on improvements.
I can’t get deeply into the specifics of any individual or organization. But I’ll say broadly that we have engaged extensively with Animal Equality leadership about the issues you’ve identified, and used our leverage to push for a number of changes there — and we’ll continue to do so. I would like to hear more about your experience and other cases you’re aware of — I’ve just emailed you about this.
This is a tough one. I recently surveyed a dozen of the most informed and aligned people on their estimate of the average welfare gain per life-year—a mix of aligned animal welfare scientists and EA researchers—and got a very wide range of answers. There’s lots of reasons for that uncertainty but the biggest is that the underlying broiler welfare science isn’t all that helpful. That’s in turn mainly due to a combo of (1) it’s really hard to measure the subjective experience of animals (preference tests are the best evidence we have, but they’re not that helpful for cases with many interacting variables), and (2) most welfare science hasn’t traditionally focused on the subjective experience of animals, but instead on weakly related factors like mortality and health.
But there’s a broad consensus amongst the informed / aligned researchers that the welfare gain of the Better Chicken Commitment outweighs the potential increase in life-years. This is mainly because the higher welfare breeds most likely to be adopted are only slightly slower than conventional breeds—we’re most likely talking about a 10-20% increase in days, not a >30% increase or anything. (Some approved breeds are much slower, but no big producer is going to adopt them.) And a little bit of that increase in days will be offset by decreased demand at a higher price point. By contrast, the welfare reforms—especially on breed and stocking density—seem likely to make a pretty substantial difference to outcomes like chronic pain and stress.
FWIW, my very rough estimate is that, accounting for the life span increase, the BCC will alleviate ~40% of the suffering of US broilers and ~25% of the suffering of EU broilers. (The EU number is lower because EU broilers start in better conditions than US broilers.) But those are very rough numbers—my 80% confidence interval would span something like 5-75% of suffering reduced. And I think others reasonably have very different estimates here.
I guess there are two pieces here. The first is the cause prioritization question of how we’ll prioritize expanding farm animal welfare vs other focus areas. That’s mostly above my pay grade—it’s a decision leadership will make informed by Open Phil’s cause prioritization research. But I’m confident that Open Phil is committed to remaining a major funder in this space, and optimistic about our future trajectory.
The second piece is how our focus within farm animal welfare work will evolve. We’re revisiting our strategy now, so I hope I’ll have more to share in a few months. But I can tell you that two broad challenges are (1) weighing proven tractable interventions (e.g. corporate cage-free and broiler welfare campaigns) against more speculative and potentially larger scale work (e.g. fish welfare, expanding the movement in East Asia), and (2) weighing scaling up existing effective organizations against funding more new promising initiatives. We’ll continue to do a mix of all the above—the key Q is how we prioritize our time and funding between each of them.
Interesting Q! I think there’s a lot that would surprise 2015-me. A few highlights:
Plant-based meat: I didn’t expect Impossible to get into Burger King so quickly, the popularity of the Beyond Meat IPO, the surge in sales of plant-based meat in US retail over the last few years, or the resulting investing boom in the space in the last few years. I think following the industry more closely would have given me a bit more foresight here, but I’m not sure it would have resulted in a lot more good grants, since there are limited grant opportunities (and the top investment opportunities all got taken without us).
Corporate campaigns: I didn’t expect advocates to so quickly get most large North American food and European food businesses to commit to go cage-free, or to succeed in extending these campaigns globally. But I also didn’t expect US broiler welfare campaigns to get as slowed down as they have. I think the main update here is the significance of momentum. I think one wrong lesson would be that we should ask for more—this was a lesson that we took from rapid US cage-free progress which I think led us to ask for too much on the US broiler ask.
Mismanagement and sexual harassment at some groups. I think the movement had more internal problems than we realized, see e.g. the above comments. As a funder it’s hard to learn about these issues—you’re mostly talking to group leadership and it’s hard to have informal conversations with regular employees. But I think these issues have updated us on a number of things, including the importance of (a) trying to have more informal conversations with non-leaders, (b) requiring strong sexual harassment policies and procedures from grantees, (c) encouraging orgs to invest in org-development, e.g. higher salaries, and better governance, e.g. independent boards.
I could go on. There are many more things that have surprised me, though I think most have been positive and due to the fact that we’re still a young fast-growing movement where there’s less of a stable baseline to predict forward.
Thanks for raising this. I just want to clarify Open Phil’s policy on filling funding gaps. We look at each case and think about the pros and cons to ‘leaving space’ in a cost-benefit framework, which includes thinking about likely donor behavior in different cases. The ‘splitting’ policy applies to GiveWell top charities only; in other cases we often avoid being too high a % of someone’s budget, and are sometimes constrained by soft cause-level giving targets, but otherwise generally fill what we see as important funding gaps. It’s possible though not certain that we’ll fund GFI more—though if we do it won’t be because GFI will “advocate on behalf of investments for philanthropists who also support Open Phil” — that’s not a consideration I think about. I’d encourage potential donors to ask GFI what they’d do with more funds this year — I wouldn’t assume that ACE’s estimated room for more funding is still accurate.